Sajid javid

Who is taking all the big, difficult decisions in government at the moment? Not Theresa May, who seems to be caught up in a particularly bad bout of prevarication. Sajid Javid’s announcement today that there will be a review into the use of medicinal cannabis came just 24 hours after his boss said there was a ‘very good reason’ for the current rules being in place. Yesterday May had also tried to block Javid from raising the matter at Cabinet, arguing that it hadn’t been on the agenda. It’s just one example of Cabinet ministers mounting very public campaigns for a policy change which they then get all the credit

At Cabinet this morning, Sajid Javid tried to raise the Billy Caldwell case and the issue of medicinal cannabis. Theresa May replied that now was not the time to discuss this question. But Javid came back several times, pointing out that this was a fast-moving situation and that the Cabinet needed to discuss it. One Secretary of State tells me, Javid ‘wouldn’t take it is not on the agenda for an answer’. The Cabinet Ministers I have spoken to since the meeting are with Javid on this issue. They believe that the government urgently needs an answer to this question if it isn’t to look heartless, and that compassion dictates

Sajid Javid is losing no time establishing his personal authority as Home Secretary and making the case for change. I wrote in my Daily Telegraphcolumn two weeks ago that the test of his independence would be whether he’d pick a fight with Theresa May on Tier 2 visas: doctors, engineers and other skilled workers coming from outside the EU. That fight has now begun. Andrew Marr asked him why thousands of tier-2 skilled workers had been rejected recently, usually because they’re not earning £50k. Marr quoted one NHS manager saying it was “completely barmy”. It seems that the new Home Secretary agrees “When that policy was put in place, there was

Our new Home Secretary Sajid Javid is a big Ayn Rand fan: twice a year, he reads the courtroom scene in ‘The Fountainhead’. He said so in an interview with The Spectator: “It’s about the power of the individual … About sticking up for your beliefs, against popular opinion. Being that individual that really believes in something and goes for it.” This curious fetish for Ayn Rand extends to conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic – Paul Ryan often gives Rand’s novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as a Christmas present. Javid is a capable figure who has no less of a chance of ascending to the top than any other of

Theresa May will be wishing Amber Rudd was still Home Secretary tonight following a fiery meeting of her Brexit inner cabinet on the issue of the customs union. The Prime Minister convened a three hour long meeting of her senior ministers in a bid to finally thrash out a plan for a post-Brexit customs arrangement to put to Brussels. However, things did not go quite to plan – with a decision delayed after a number of ministers raising serious concerns with No 10’s favoured option. The most revealing aspect of the meeting relates to the customs partnership that Downing Street wants to push. This hybrid customs model would in theory keep

Sajid Javid has only been Home Secretary for seven hours but already he appears to have settled into the role with gusto. In his first appearance at the despatch box as Home Secrtary, Javid was greeted with cheers from the Tory benches before warning Diane Abbott – his opposite number – that she did not have a ‘monopoly’ on anger over the Windrush debacle. Javid also made sure to put some clear blue water between himself and his predecessor’s predecessor – one Theresa May. Asked by Labour’s Stephen Doughty whether about the net deportations target, Javid said he was not currently aware of any cases of wrongful deportation – before adding

Earlier on this morning, Andrew Marr tried his hand at Urdu. Or was it Punjabi? In any case, he made a point of introducing Lancashire-born and bred Minister Sajid Javid as ‘Sajeed Javeed’. The Communities Secretary didn’t flinch – as you’d expect, given that this is definitely not the first time his name has been mispronounced. He’s probably given up correcting people, or even noticing mispronunciations. But his name is hardly a tongue twister: he’s a northerner, his name rhymes with avid. As all schoolchildren know, words ending in –id are pronounced with a short ‘i’. Lid, kid, hid, quid. So where did Sajeed Javeed come from? As a member

With two new polls putting the Conservatives ahead of Labour for the first time since the snap election, there’s reason for Christmas cheer in No 10. However, despite this, the result of the disastrous election remains a sore point in government. So, Steerpike was curious to see Sajid Javid make a joke at the expense of Theresa May and her election campaign in a speech to the Federation of Master Builders. Talking about the work the FMB does, the Secretary of State for local government said that not even Winston Churchill was immune to ‘shoddy workmanship’ – before going on to suggest May was: ‘After all, none of us are immune from

Too many Tories have a sense of inevitable defeat at the next general election. They can see what the problems are but are fatalistic about their ability to solve them before 2022. Sajid Javid isn’t one of these Tories. He quickly grasped that the election result changed the internal Tory debate about housing policy and has been pushing for more radicalism ever since. On Sunday, he went on Andrew Marr to argue that the government should borrow to build. Javid’s argument is the same he made when he was backing Stephen Crabb for leader in 2016, interest rates are so low that it makes sense for government to borrow to

If Britain really is still a nation of shopkeepers, the Government seems to be picking its enemies rather unwisely with its plans to ramp up business rates – in some cases by as much as 400 per cent over the next five years. The policy – and the somewhat bungled attempt by Communities Secretary Sajid Javid to defend the plans – has already sparked a big row, which shows no signs of calming down. The Daily Mail is clear who we should point the finger at: Sajid Javid. The paper says the Communities Secretary made a ’magnificent’ arrival on the frontline of British politics with his speech in 2015 in which he

Living room Sir: Sajid Javid is quoted as saying that the biggest constraint on building more houses is the ‘lack of land’ (‘Javid’s home truths’, 11 February). While he is right to call for government intervention, I don’t agree with this view. We may live on a small island in relative terms, but that doesn’t diminish our actual land mass. For argument’s sake, let us say the average house takes up 100 square metres. This means that you could fit 10,000 houses into a single square kilometre. To put that into perspective, the Isle of Wight, with an area of 380 km², has the capacity to accommodate 3,800,000 houses. Obviously,

Jeremy Corbyn isn’t going to become Prime Minister. But if the housing crisis isn’t solved, the next left wing populist could—I say in The Sun this morning. Home ownership has dropped to a 30 year low and homes are becoming increasingly unaffordable. In London the average house costs 11 times earnings. Without radical reform, the Tory idea of property owning democracy will wither and, eventually, die. The government’s housing white paper due out next week is meant to try and solve these problems. Councils will be told to come up with realistic views of the housing needs of their area that take into account the growing population. If government thinks